


Dare Et Accipere

by MayorMimi



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: A little something involving El's power and Will, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bonding, Comfort, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Feelings, Feels, Fluff, Forehead Kisses, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Nosebleed, Nostalgia, One Shot, Post-Canon, Roommates, Sad with a Happy Ending, Sibling Bonding, Supernatural Elements, but to quote Mike Wheeler, or rather a subplot, that's a sub concern
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 16:49:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20429234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayorMimi/pseuds/MayorMimi
Summary: Adopted siblings don't always see eye-to-eye.





	Dare Et Accipere

There was always an unspoken but understood rule in the Byers’ household that Saturday mornings were reserved for homework assigned on Fridays. This rule seemed to pursue the family wherever they went as if it helped them settle into whatever new home they established, so—rather than letting it turn into an ancien régime—Will could be found solving algebra on the dining table of their new home while Eleven laid on her stomach, reading on the couch in front of him. The mid-autumn sunrise greeted the two through the window, but both were in deep focus and paid no mind to the appetizing smell wafting in from the kitchen. El’s sense of scent hadn’t been too keen, lately, which might have been fortunate; she already had difficulty focusing on her book, and occasionally had to reread pages from top to bottom. When kicking her lower legs pensively in the air behind her wouldn’t be enough, she’d roll over onto her back and gave her stress ball a firm squeeze.

Will sat behind the couch, so El stole a peek over the headrest to see what her friend was up to. A polished little wind-up robot stood on the table by his worksheets, just waiting to be used whenever the student needed a break. When Will looked up from his practices and locked eyes with the girl, Eleven started. Still, she supposed she could make use of the opportunity. El rose to her knees, grabbing the head of the couch for support, and the arm that clutched the stress ball tilted back to signify she was about to throw it.

Caught by surprise, Will anxiously lifted his hands to indicate he was ready, then the ball shot through the air. It crossed over the mountain of leftover cardboard boxes between so fast, both children could’ve sworn it brushed past his reaching fingers, but it somehow landed in his palm all the same. Giving the toy a few squeezes while he returned to his original position, the boy noticed a couple of things: the ball was warm—which might’ve been why El lost interest in it after it lost its cool texture—and that the girl in question had a hand stretched out towards the robot, which weakly dragged its feet across the table before it tripped onto its toes and fell over. She still had her arm raised at the model pitifully, so Will rose with it and walked over to hand it to her. “Thank you,” he heard as a faint whisper before the sound of a toy winding up.

“Any...Anytime,” stammered the boy, surprised to hear her scarce voice in an otherwise silent room. He noticed, as Eleven set the toy onto the ground and watched it wander off, that El was out of the pajamas she had on a few minutes ago; the girl was now wearing a colorful, familiar top. “Wait, is that my shirt?”

“...Your mom let me have it,” murmured Eleven, whose voice could barely be heard over the traffic outside. This city’s sounds were certainly a far cry from Hawkins.

“That’s fine, it looks better on you than it does on me.” He shrugged, adding in a low voice to himself, “Just like the rest of my clothes, I guess.” This is only because—although they still fit him—the hemlines and sleeves on all his shirts and coats receded while shirt buttons or jacket zippers became more difficult to fasten. Eleven looked like a natural in them in contrast, if one overlooked the fact that she’d have to grow into them just a smidge. Thus, a new and second unspoken rule of the household was born: such clothes belong to El, now.

Quietly complying by rules—spoken or not—would be the grown-up thing to do, Will believed. He liked to think of sharing that way, regardless of whether one was giving up toys, clothes, or one’s best friend.

“Sweetheart, can you move your homework out of the way?” Will snapped back to reality to find Joyce carrying the breakfast tray, and hastily shoved his stack of tasks aside for the savory-smelling food. Eleven perked up at the sound of plates clinking and clacking while moving about the table.

“What’re you doing all the way there?” Joyce hadn’t noticed El, at first, who seemed to have huddled up between cushions with her toy. “Come have eggs, honey.”

The girl checked the clock and noticed with satisfaction that breakfast that day remained the same as yesterday and the days before that. Consistent time in daily activities helped Eleven find a sense of order after being practically thrown out of Hawkins, so she showered and had meals at the same time every day. “Eggos?” The corners of her mouth almost seemed to quirk up at the thought of the heavenly meal. El set the book aside as she rose from the couch to close the space between the breakfast table and her.

“No, sweetie, eggs.” El looked down, smile fading. “Aw, I’m sorry...but trying to adjust here must’ve drained your energy—no doubt there—so you’ll need some real food, for now.”

The girl shook her head and sat down, perhaps to deny the implication she had any issue with whatever was served. Will could easily deduce she missed her frozen waffles, but that was only because he had keen eyes—her expression otherwise remained vacant as ever. He good-naturedly resisted to point anything out or sympathize out loud. “You could add salt to it,” Will proposed, instead.

Joyce’s eyes moved between both ends of the table during this exchange, as if she waited to observe a mannerism in El and Will that’d mirror Will and Jonathon’s behavior a few years ago. The mother failed to spot any sign of them acting like siblings just yet, but she did notice a cloud of brown curls sitting on El’s head and Will’s cowlick. “Long night?” Asked the woman, dividing the scrambled eggs between the teenagers.

“You could say that,” Will chuckled while watching his friend’s waves stick out on end, bouncing a little as she rubbed her eyes then reached her hand across the table. Nightmares weren’t anything to chuckle about, but worrying about their mother would help nobody.

Eleven had just begun to say, “Last night—”

Before Will coughed, then interjected: “We were pretty restless and ended up sleeping in late. Right, El?”

Just as she was about to shake her head, she noticed Will nod coaxingly and hurried to do the same. “Well,” Joyce chuckled, “good thing it was a weekend night, I guess.” She didn’t notice Eleven glance back at Will, visually perplexed, before dropping the subject and remembering his suggestion earlier.

El’s fingers opened towards the salt shaker, which shuffled pathetically on its own. Will had just been thinking about how slowly the item scraped across the surface, when—as he focused on the object—it sped up a bit before quickly being enveloped within her fingers. El considered the shaker with a content smile and set it aside without using it. “Maybe she hasn’t run out of cool tricks to show off,” thought the boy with relief. He returned to the eggs.

Joyce noticed her son almost wolf down his meal. “Easy on the eggs, honey,” she sighed, “we don’t want a repeat of that one time—”

“Mom…!” Will’s voice convoluted with bashful laughter, mixing in with hers.

Eleven looked between them inquisitively. “One...time?”

“Don’t you remember, sweetheart?” It occurred to Joyce that perhaps what she referred to had happened before El moved in with them. “Oh, I forgot you weren’t there.” Joyce didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t stop smiling either.

Eleven had the impression it was one of those things that were “funnier if they weren’t explained,” to borrow Jonathon’s words the previous time the Byers laughed at an inside joke, unintentionally excluding the girl. She watched Will only answer by shoving more eggs into his mouth to block out laughter, and almost envied him.

When the plates were cleared of food and the table was cleared of plates, Will spread his worksheets out again and returned to sighing wistfully while he flipped through his assignments. As bookish as the teen was, doing homework just wasn’t the same without the company of a paladin, a bard, and a ranger. El didn’t seem to find whatever she was reading any easier, which he could observe from the way she massaged her bottom lip with her thumb and wore a perplexed expression. She’d been tackling the book, for a while, but didn’t seem to make much progress past the beginning. “...Um, need help?”

The question came in a small voice; Will randomly felt the need to lower his tone when speaking to El due to how hushed everything became when he was alone with her. She seemed so startled by the sudden break of silence, it almost made him feel guilty. “...What?”

“Your book,” he clarified. “You look stumped. Why don’t you ask mom, again?”

Will didn’t know how to interpret the way she looked away from him, at first. “I ask her too much…” Each word followed the other very slowly.

“Oh—afraid she’s busy?” She gave a gradual nod. Will scanned his surroundings for a solution without answering. “Hey, you know what?” He pushed his chair, and without explanation, vanished down the hallway. With the only other person in the room gone, Eleven could hear nothing but the seconds tick by on the wall clock. She counted thirty before he returned.

“Try this,” Eleven recognized the crimson-navy paperback in his hands—it was the same book Hopper called a ‘dictionary’, from which he’d select words for her to use thrice before sundown, so it’d stay with her. The book shifted across the table—by his hand, at first, before she possibly imagined it to inch towards her on its own—and she rifled through the yellowed pages, which were so thin she could almost see her fingers through them.

“Is it a word you don’t know, or is the concept hard to grasp, or—?” He heard something slide beneath him and looked down. El pushed her novel towards him with her finger pressed just above an underlined word. “Maternal? Oh, that’s easy,” he remarked, then realized he might’ve embarrassed her with his careless statement. “I mean, I didn’t know what it was until recently but it basically just means anything to do with your mother.”

“My mother?” She continued to flip through. Hopper’s dictionary used to be blanketed in notes and scribbles that made his copy—their copy—feel more personal. The Byers’ seemed desolate and vacant; they made a habit of preserving whatever they could afford.

“I mean, moms in general.”

“Oh. Then, fratt-ernal means…” She cut herself off for a moment, “fathers?”

“No, it means—like—brotherly. Or if you’re talking about twins, they’re twins that don’t look the same.”

“So like us.”

“What?”

“Twins that don’t look the same.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it—”

“What about...whopper—whippersnapper?”

“Uh...it’s just a funny way to say brat.”

“What?”

“Y’know, b-r-a-t.” He spelled out. “Br—what’s so funny?”

Eleven struggled to contain her giggles, shaking her head. “Nothing.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” she denied, wishing someone was still here to understand. Eleven had a few inside jokes on her own, none of which the family got, so far, which often made her feel all the more isolated. El kicked softly so her toes would bump against his shin. “Go on.”

Will’s leg twitched at the contact, and he quickly forced his focus back onto the book before his attention strayed. “...Oh, storge is one of the words you wanted to ask about?” Eleven nodded. “That’s...” He paused to recall, before concluding triumphantly, “That’s what we call familial love.”

“Fami-li-al?” The syllables began to disconnect towards the end as she pronounced it with care.

“Love between family—usually paternal.” It occurred to him that she might not be familiar with the term ‘paternal love’. “Oh, that’s a parent’s love for their children.”

“It—It has its own word?” Eleven’s mind nearly wandered off to Hopper again, but she steered it back.

“The ancient Greeks gave it one, then we borrowed it. I guess it’s because how people feel about their kids couldn’t be described by any single, English word—like...like how a mom feels about her son or a dad feels about his daughter and stuff.”

Will was making it more challenging for El to not think of Hop. “How is it...different?”

“It’s unconditional, apparently. I mean, no matter what your kid does, you still care.” He might’ve stopped there, but her curious stare overwhelmed him. “I guess it’s just accepting or putting up with them, even if they drive you crazy. Even if you had big fights or arguments, for example.”

Even if you screamed, threw tantrums, slammed doors, broke windows and rules, or ran off. She thought, picking at the cornflower blue hair tie on her wrist and feeling a lump in her throat.

“Is something wrong?” He abruptly cut her string of thoughts off.

El jumped to pretending to be engaged with the dictionary, opening it once more. She swallowed, before forcing out, “No.”

“You can have it if you want.”

“Hm?” Eleven hadn’t caught whatever he said, as she went on flipping pages until they all fell and opened to the inside of the cover. The blank, first page bore, “Will Byers”, written neatly in a small hand—just the way it had for years, now. The boy in question reached over with his pencil and rubbed the name out using the eraser end. He returned it to his friend with a coaxing smile, passing the pencil into El’s hand.

She observed gray remains of his name on the sheet and it occurred to her what she was expected to do. The girl etched in a black, “Jane Hopper”, on top of his name with large and childish scrawl. Eleven glanced back up at her companion, searching for a reaction, and found only content approval.

However, she oddly and suddenly didn’t look happy in any way—like something had occurred to her. El only frowned, seeming disappointed out of the blue as if she remembered something unpleasant. “...Last night, we fell asleep at eleven.”

“You remember...?”

“...And we woke up at six,” she continued as if it meant anything, “we were asleep for seven hours.”

“Yeah, as usual.”

“So why did you lie?”

“What?”

“Friends don’t lie,” she went on, “and you’re not anyone’s boyfriend.”

“Wait, what do boyfriends have to do with—”

“Max said boyfriends always lie.”

“Huh…? Ah. Well, she isn’t wrong,” he joked, “but still, I can’t see where you’re taking this.”

“I wanted to tell your mother about our nightmares, so you lied to her.”

“Oh. Well...ever heard of the term ‘white lie’?” Eleven’s expression seemed to demand a definition. “It’s...it’s a small, harmless lie you tell for a good reason or other...like protecting someone’s feelings.”

“To protect your friends’ feelings?”

“Or your family,” he added, “it’s never about anything big or too important. If we told mom about our bad dreams, she’ll only get more worried and tear her hair out trying to make us feel better. It’s best for her sanity if we just suck it up and get over it, they aren’t even real, anyway.”

“They feel real.”

“They feel real to kids,” Will sounded almost wistful as he sighed, “but we’re not kids anymore. I’ve been starting to think he’s right, we’ll just outgrow it eventually.”

“He?” Asked Eleven. Unlike Will, she never figured it out for herself and simply waited for an answer that never came. Setting aside how vaguely her brother spoke, El couldn’t understand why Will always made such an effort to brush off things they had issues with. It didn’t make any sense to her why he insisted on carrying the weight of sleepless and fearful nights on his back when a parent could always easily remedy that by staying in their child’s room until they sleep again the way Hopper did; he always knew what to do—most of the time. In the end, she supposed she’d have to learn to go along with the whole ‘white lie’ concept.

While puzzling over Will’s enigmatic motives, El’s eyes suddenly roamed up to the clock hanging on the wall behind him caught her eye. “Eleven-Eleven,” she murmured.

Will peeked over his shoulder. “You mean 11:55?” It occurred to him that perhaps she was too accustomed to digital clocks and that someone would need to teach her how to read analog clocks. “What about it—” When he looked back, El had already left her chair

As it turned out half an hour later, El usually showered at this time every other day—and if she was even a little early or late, it would’ve peeved her to no end. Will drew this conclusion when he entered his room and heard the shower in the bathroom running. The sudden sound initially spooked him, until he spotted his sleeping bag on the ground and remembered that his room was also hers, now, or perhaps the opposite might’ve been more accurate. The heater in Eleven’s room broke so the girl claimed his bed while he was left to sleep on the floor; his sister would’ve slept with Joyce by default, but El insisted on sharing his room. Between growing used to dozing off in her cabin bed while Hopper was in an adjacent room or cuddling up to Max under her blanket, she didn’t exactly mind the company of her brother, along with a few framed photos on the bedside table--even if those photos didn’t include her. Photographs of familiar faces somehow helped her adjust to new surroundings.

The sleeping bag, meanwhile, was a two-person one Will used to share with Jonathon—which thankfully gave the boy some extra space for his limbs. It felt a little lonely without his brother, but the familiar object itself helped him feel at home in his strange new bedroom. Will occasionally caught Eleven curled up onto it during the day like a housecat with a book in hand, but never asked why she wasn’t on her own bed; he found it almost endearing.

Will had been so lost in thought, he didn’t notice the sound of a tap screw before the shower’s noise faded.

The steam inside had a sharp, medicinal scent—a far cry from the warm and woody smells Eleven could catch back at Hawkins. She patted herself down and dried her hair with rough towels, contemplating her toothbrush holder that was once Will’s favorite mug. This was before its lip chipped and its handles broke off to leave no more than two stubs, while the illustration he painted on faded. The former two were Eleven’s unintentional work when she tried to fetch it for him one morning with her psychic powers. He smiled and claimed he didn’t care about it anymore anyway, which she just began to suspect was a “white lie”. Eleven at least learned that trying to mix passing an item to someone and training one’s supernatural abilities might not be a very wise combination.

The girl had just begun buttoning her shirt up when she heard Joyce and Jonathon moving around the hallway right outside the bedroom, conversing loudly about grocery shopping. Hands not leaving her top, her head whipped towards the exit before El rushed to unlock the door and swing it open.

Will was surprised by his friend popping out abruptly, bringing clouds and fat cotton balls of steam out with her. “Oh. Will.”

“Yeah?”

“Tell...Tell Jonathan to buy more shampoo.” She spoke flatly, as usual, detaching the letters like she was slowly reciting phrases she memorized. “I finished yours.”

He hopped out of his bed and leaned out the doorway. “Jonathon!” Yelled the little brother, scaring the living daylights out of his older sibling.

“What—What?!” Jonathon turned to look at his younger brother, wearing an expression resembling that of a man that’d been shaken awake in the middle of the night. “Are you okay?!”

“Please don’t forget to get shampoo.” Will’s voice dropped apologetically. “For El.” He added the latter as if it made the matter more of a priority.

“Oh,” Jonathon breathed, “Yeah—Yeah, sure…” He turned away, mumbling, “Shampoo, right…”

Will disappeared back into the room. “Your hair’s still wet.”

“Is—Is your mom here?”

“She left with Jonathon.”

“I have to wait until she‘s back.”

“You’ll catch a cold,” he urged, almost the same way Hopper would when chilly weather rolled in and Eleven’s hair grew too long to dry by air. This was what preceded all the hours Hopper spent drying El’s hair, which soon became his favorite part of the day when it was one of the few daily activities that the father and daughter could spend together. The girl would’ve mentioned this, before supposing she couldn’t expect Will to understand.

“Y’know how to use a...tumble dryer?” Asked Eleven.

“What—? You mean blow dryer?” El nodded and waved dismissively. “I might.”

This was how Will ended up sitting crossed-legged on his bed, with his mother’s blow dryer in hand and his friend in the same position in front of him. His hands worked through the damp curls as he turned the device on. “How does mom usually do this, anyway?” The hair dryer’s noise drowned his question out.

“What?”

“I said—!” He yelled before she jumped and turned to look at him with a pained expression, clasping the back of her head. “What?”

“Hot…”

“Huh?”

“Too hot!”

“Oh…” Will reduced the speed and heat, then gestured for her to turn back. She eyed him skeptically, so he blew a little air in El’s face, producing a frightened giggle before the girl cooperated. “Does she brush your hair?” The boy asked while his hand hovered tentatively over the brush neglected on her mattress.

She nodded. “It’s faster.”

“Please, don’t move your head.”

Will went on blowing as they sat in silence. Eleven finally broke that semi-quiet. “...He used to tell stories when he’d do this.”

“‘He’?” The boy nearly asked. By good luck, Will eventually registered on his own and said nothing.

“There was one about small people and a shoemaker. And another about a cat who wore shoes. My favorite was…” She made an effort to remember the title. “Cinderella.”

“What is it with you and shoes?”

El laughed. “I always asked him to tell that one.”

“There’s a bookstore nearby, you know, with fairy tales I bet,” Will added as if that ought to settle it.

Initially, Eleven said nothing. “If I went...would you come with me?”

“Oh, how come?”

“I don’t want to go…‘shopping’...without a party member.”

Will would have agreed to the favor, but he was so bewildered and preoccupied with asking questions that he forgot to do so. So before answering, “Sure,” the way he intended to, his curiosity got the best of him and he instead asked: “Why can’t you?”

“I’d go with Max. But she’s back home, and the city’s...scary.”

“It’s not that scary, you’ll be with Jonathon,” he attempted to soothe. Will turned the dryer off and moved the brush swiftly through her locks for the last once-over. “This is our home now, anyway.”

She faced him, supported by her hands against the mattress. What startled him was the way her face flushed with frustration at his contrary nature and refusal to understand. “It’s not our home. Max isn’t here...or Mike.” Her voice broke at the latter. “Dustin and Lucas are far away, and—and Hop isn’t with me, either—”

“I was just—” El looked genuinely offended Will would dare to call anywhere but Hawkins ‘home’, and that offended him in return. The boy believed that she was acting like a kid, or worse, making the same mistake he made at Hawkins, which was to whine about harsh and inescapable realities of life. After receiving what was practically a wake-up slap from Mike and Lucas following his outburst in the Wheelers’ basement, Will swore not to do something as deplorable as complaining—he was too old for that. “I was just trying to—”

“Don’t tell me I don’t miss home…” She firmly poked his shoulder. “You can’t act like you don’t miss it, either. You shouldn’t pretend we’re not...not...homesick.” Eleven punctuated the last sentence with an air of pride in finding the right word, but a look of despair contorted her face in all other respects. “Everything’s big, loud, and there are too many cars and strangers. Hawkins was small, quiet. We knew everyone.”

From the way El had spoken, he supposed the girl wasn’t producing this all on the spot to argue, but rather had all her complaints brewing in her for so long, she couldn’t help but take it out on someone given the opportunity. “Well, I’m trying to look at the glass half full,” he defended, “and you’re not helping, so what’s your point?” His words emerged a little sharper than he intended. Maybe his voice was too harsh. El looked at him stricken and at a loss for words.

She might’ve finally answered him, but the room was so quiet, he could hardly tell. “I just…”

“...Huh?” In his opinion, Eleven acted as if he didn’t already give up so much of what used to be his for her sake as if she wasn’t satisfied with taking his belongings and his first best friend.

Eleven lifted the back of her hand to her mouth, shaking her head slightly as if to deny herself the right to cry at such an inappropriate time. “I just want to go home,” was the last thing she managed out of herself, which emerged as a shattered whimper. She lightly cupped hands to her mouth, trying to suck up the tears with embarrassment. El couldn’t even look up at Will, feeling both ashamed and weaker with each sob.

“Oh—” Will sat upright and found himself too alarmed to think with clarity. “Hey….” Head spinning, he quickly touched both hands to her forearms, in an attempt to encourage her not to hold her tears back. It worked but didn’t get any easier: Eleven dropped her hands and leaned forward.

All at once, her face had been pushed into Will’s shoulder. The boy himself stiffened and tilted slightly back, but she only pressed harder, grasping his sleeve for support. Her clutch on his shirt was tight and unpleasant, nearly painful. While her narrow chin dug into his arm, he could almost smell the sage leaf off her hair that reminded him of every brand of men’s shampoo one could buy at a drugstore. She would’ve definitely shifted away if she knew he was uncomfortable—with a shy stoicism that would’ve only lead to a bigger burst into her pillow late at night when she would be certain everyone was asleep—but El was too upset to notice just yet, and he suspected he would’ve broken her trust if he couldn’t even give her a shoulder to cry on. Will supposed that any girl would prefer to be in her lover’s company while shedding tears, or with her best friend at the very least, but Eleven would have to settle for—he paused to count all the party members—the fifth-best; a sort-of friend and sort-of brother.

Still, that didn’t mean the boy had any idea what he was doing. Will witnessed Jonathon comfort their mother a few times before, but Jonathon was his eldest brother and Joyce was an emotionally steely woman. The boy himself had little experience with teenage girls or even crying friends, let alone both simultaneously. He just wished the party members, or ‘Momma Harrington’, or most preferably Hopper would be there to do a better job than him. Will felt he was incompetent, and that his friend deserved better—but he still elected to give his best shot. “There, now, let it all out,” he whispered awkwardly, turning nearly as red as she did when he brought a cautious hand up to her arm.

Her response was to liberate a few trembling sobs, which gave Will’s heart a dreadful, sinking sensation as the lights above the two flickered. His hand dragged up to El’s shoulder to make an indecisive motion combining squeezing and rubbing, brewing ideas laced with panic, and trying to remember—maybe—all the things he would’ve liked to have heard when he cried. “Uh...I get it, I do,” he gently murmured. “I promise I didn’t mean to talk to you like a kid. But, just because things are different now, it doesn’t mean we can’t—”

“Jonathon?” Before Will could finish his sentence, the two were caught off guard by his mother’s voice in the kitchen. It didn’t seem El was ready to be caught crying by another pair of thoughtful worry-warts, or she might’ve piled more stress onto them than what they already had loaded on their shoulders, so she looked to the door that already began inching shut by her power alone.

“Not closing fast enough, though,” thought Will as he eyed the entrance with trepidation, just before it slammed and locked. The noise startled the teenager, who immediately looked at his equally alarmed companion and cried, “Oh!” With some effort, he pretended not to be as surprised as she was. “...Well, see? Knew you’d be able to start locking doors again.”

The two noticed shadows moving from the crack under the door. “Will?” It was a woman’s voice. “Sweetheart, are you there?”

“Yeah!” The silence as the shadow under the door refused to move from its spot felt too questioning. “Just—uh—locked the door to...to change into my PJs. El’s having a shower, and I’ll be out soon.”

“Alright...”

The boy’s attention returned to El without really acknowledging the dumbfounded stare she gave him. “Anyway,” he mumbled, “I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed you did that.”

Eleven didn’t answer. She simply pressed her finger into a sensitive spot where his collarbone met his chest. Will was too bewildered to even notice any discomfort, so to drive her point home, El dragged her thumb across his lips and held it up for him to find it stained with fresh scarlet. This left Will speechless as the boy turned to look at his reflection across the surface of the glass bed-side window, and discovered he was having a nosebleed. The teenager clapped a hand to his mouth and nearly fell backward off the bed. Shaking, he shifted his fingers away to mouth to El, “What the heck?” His voice picked up, slowly rising while he shook his head and reeled off, “No way. No way. This can’t be what I thin—”

Her icy hand against his mouth shut him up again. “Panic makes it bleed more.”

“Mmf...”

“Keep your head above your heart,” she mumbled, pulling him upright. El brought her hand to the back of his head so to tilt it a little forward. “Pinch your nose.” He followed her instructions, wide-eyed and trembling. Eleven hopped out of bed and rushed into the still-steamed bathroom for tissues to clean the stain on his face, returning as she proceeded, “Breath through your mouth.”

“Oka—“

“Don’t talk.” He nearly apologized, if he wasn’t so intimidated by the thought of what she’d do if he spoke again. She sat across from him once more and patted the stain smeared from his nose and mouth to his lower cheek with tissues. The room fell still after Will’s quiet. The girl cut through the silence with a curious little sigh. “...Did—Did my powers leave me for you? Did I...use them too much?” She turned the theory over in her mind, shrugging a shoulder. “Whatever happened...it’s not scary,” she reassured her friend, “And I promise I‘m not mad.”

Will still couldn’t help but feel a little guilty; the ability felt so wrong resting on his shoulders. They weren’t his and shouldn’t ever be; as much as the boy enjoyed giving, taking never sat right with him—especially when it occurred to him that El’s struggle for the past few months was likely his doing. Especially when it occurred to him he had just interrupted her cry to shift their attention to himself.

“Will you tell your mom?” Inquired Eleven. He shook his head, and the girl supposed that was a decision fit for someone nicknamed ‘Will the Wise’. “Then, be careful.”

“Will?” It was the woman in question calling his name on the other side of the door. She gently knocked. “Are you still in there?”

“Yeah…” He mumbled, scrambling for the dresser, then repeated so she could hear him, “Yeah!” To Eleven, Will hissed, “Look way.”

“What?”

“Or close your eyes.” She cocked her head, innocently and ignorantly. From her still-damp eyes, he saw that she failed to grasp what he meant. “Oh, just don’t look.” When he stood before the drawers and grabbed the hem of his shirt to tug it off, Eleven finally caught his drift and turned the other way.

“Will, dear?” The other end of the door called again, just as he pulled on a fresh shirt.

“Yup...!” He nearly crashed down face-first onto the floor while hopping towards the door and trying to pull his pants on at the same time. The boy tried to open it, found that it was unlocked with some vexation and embarrassment, then unlocked it to face his mother—opening it only wide enough for her to see him. “Sorry, yeah?”

“What’re you doing in your pajamas this early?”

“Well—” He sighed to buy enough time for inventing an excuse. “Well, I didn’t plan on going out today and I guess this—” he tugged on his nightclothes— “is better than collapsing into bed with my day clothes on like I did yesterday, so why not?”

“I…guess…?” Joyce’s son never outgrew being quite the oddball, in any case, so she’s given up asking about his reasoning for strange habits long ago. “Anyway,” Joyce moved on, releasing the doorknob, “tell El dinner is ready.”

“Sure.” He watched her pass him a nod before walking off.

Will withdrew into the freezing room behind a closed door and turned back to El, whose eyes were wet again and whose body trembled a bit with suppressed sobs. The boy sighed. “Mom says dinner’s ready, but,” he breathed gently, “if you’re not up for it, I can tell them you said you’re not hungry.” Eleven didn’t answer. “Or I can stay here with you if you want.”

Still, no reply. “I guess it’s better if you were left alone.” Will stood at the threshold of the doorway, looking back at his friend one more time—wondering if she’d resent him later for not keeping her company the way Will resented Mike because of the paladin’s absence when the cleric had his outburst in the rain—before finally walking off.

Eleven didn’t join them until the three were halfway done with their meals. Whenever Jonathon looked at her, she gave him an acknowledging smile. Whenever Joyce spoke to her, she listened attentively. But it was during the scarce moments when the girl thought nobody was watching—and she would’ve been right if Will wasn’t so good at stealing glances—that Eleven’s face dropped from a lively expression to an enervated one. The outbreak, the sudden interruption, and the overwhelming re-discovery of El’s powers in somewhere new all doubtlessly drained her. It was clear that the issue evolved, in the time she kept it bottled up, from something as mundane as wistful melancholy to a larger conflict—and there it lingered, practically eating at her insides. Their last summer familiarized Will with this emotion more than he’d like.

It didn’t seem like the guilt was ever going to end, for the realization that Eleven’s abilities were in Will all along made the boy feel like a sticky-handed thief or a greedy crook. Deciding that he had enough of torturing his conscious, Will supposed he ought to drown his shame out with food, which is why the boy held a hand up towards the salt shaker to grab it, only to watch his fly into his palm. Face turning a guilty pink, he didn’t dare to check if Jonathon or his mother witnessed this. In case they had, he mumbled, “Thanks, El.” Then, he touched the area above his lip to check for blood. Will might’ve smiled after he determining his fingertips were left clean, but it was difficult to smile at that moment at all.

Bedtime was more awkward that night than even the first night she moved into his room. A difficult silence hung in the icy atmosphere, as the two wondered what the point of Eleven staying in Will’s room was, if his heater didn’t work very efficiently. El’s thin pajamas did little to keep her warm, and Will could observe as much from her visible shivers. Asking her about the temperature didn’t feel appropriate, so the next thing Eleven felt was a thick, Afghan blanket brush past her shoulder before draping over the girl. It had a strange, funky smell that was nothing like the nutty scent of Hopper’s blankets, but she wasn’t about to complain.

From the footsteps and the creak of the floorboards from way across the room, it didn’t seem Will was close enough to physically cloak it over her without the help of telekinesis--and an audible sniff that implied a nosebleed only confirmed her guess, but the louder wooden squeaks hinted her friend was approaching her anyway.

Will sat on the bed. He waited to see if Eleven would indicate in any way that his presence on the mattress bothered her, but she indicated nothing.

“Listen,” he started anew, before thinking, then repeating, “Listen...I get that Hawkins must’ve been a paradise compared to this ‘concrete jungle’.” Will shrugged, “You might hate yourself for not enjoying it while it lasted, I know I did when I—Never mind, the point is that being homesick might feel new to you or make you think it’s your fault, and that’s scary, but people always feel homesick one way or another. Whether it was for a place or even a time...” He trailed off, hugging his knees to his chest. “You might be afraid to admit it because you’re worried about dragging everyone around you down—because even if they missed what was, which they usually handle better or don’t even feel altogether, it seems like it’d never hurt them as much as it hurts you. Then you start to feel like a kid or a brat—” The boy laughed dryly, though he couldn’t understand why— “when you wish you didn’t feel like a kid, then everyone tells you what you can or can’t feel because you’re not a kid anymore, and you’re too old to be whining about inevitables like change. But trust me, if you let it stir in you too long, it’s only going to turn into an albatross.”

He waited eagerly for her to ask what an albatross meant, but she never did; Eleven was still silent, and Will hoped the quiet was an inquisitive, curious silence. He moved on: “It’s bad enough when no matter how hard you try to put it into words, even though you practically lived together—” Will scoffed— “people won’t get what you’re getting sentimental about. But it’s even worse when they talk about all the stuff they did without you, with all their inside jokes or their ‘Oh-I-Forgot-You-Weren’t-There’.” The latter hit so close to home, Eleven wondered how Will could’ve possibly guessed such specific details about how she felt so well. “And I hate to think that that’s what we’ve been like to you, so I guess that’s why I’ve been getting so defensive about it. Jonathon and Mom have been so wrapped up in making sure this place could become one the family called home, I guess we all forgot you saw Hawkins differently than we did...But, just because things are different now, it doesn’t mean we can’t do the same things we used to.” His voice picked up. “So, you know what?”

Eleven’s only answer was to inch her knees closer to the book and her chest, which was likely a reply to the chilly room rather than anything Will said. He pressed on with determination: “We can go buy Eggos tomorrow, maybe to add to our eggs or whatever, and we can get fairytale books on the way. Probably an analog wristwatch, too, so you can learn to read non-digital clocks. Heck, we can go shopping the way you did with Max. You and I can start doing ‘word-of-the-day’s, and...Am I missing anything? How does that sound?” Will peeked expectantly over Eleven’s arm, only to find that her eyelashes had dropped to her cheeks, indicating she had likely been fast asleep for some time now.

The boy watched her a little to be sure, before finally hopping off the mattress and returning to his sleeping bag on the ground.

He wriggled himself in and wished her a good night in a hushed voice before facing away from her towards the door...

What he hadn’t known was that Eleven was awake, likely wider than he was considering his low yawn. El gave up closing her eyes to block tears—a few melancholic, but reassured tears—then wiped the mist out of her vision with the back of her hand.

Was it her imagination, or did the room look darker? Before the girl could brush the thought off, her surroundings visually grew dimmer. Eleven looked up at the ceiling light and found it almost failing to work. The lamp on her end table agreed, winking once or twice before it faded from sunshine to twilight. Overall, making anything out of her surroundings grew to become more and more challenging.

Inevitably, the room was enveloped in pitch darkness at last. Almost nothing could be seen save for her friend’s back—she noticed as she turned to face him—which was bathed in a powder-blue strip of moonlight. The boy remained still, not reacting to the sudden inkiness of the room. It was as if he slept through it, which she guessed was the cause of the dying light, to begin with. Eleven managed to spot the night-light in the corner of their room, which he bought for late-night reading since the bedside lamp was too harsh.

It reminded El of the one Hopper bought for her. It was a little crescent-shaped night light she kept by her bed until the girl would eventually outgrow it. That was likely one of the few changes she allowed in her bedtime routine, which Hop and Eleven preserved invariably because they knew even the slightest alteration would get on her nerves. In turn, this reminded Eleven of her bedtime routine back in Hawkins that the father and daughter made an effort not to break it; they wordlessly understood it would’ve irritated her to no end.

Finally, she remembered the only surprise she liked to receive at night, which ironically came on days the parent and child would argue without apologizing. Hours later, Hop would kiss her head goodnight as his way of reminding his daughter he loved her—nevertheless. “Unconditional love,” was what Will would’ve probably called it.

Eleven stared at Will’s back pensively. She dropped the book, rose from her bed, tried to rest as soundlessly as possible onto her knees, and crouched over to Will. Silence. El rested both hands against the floor either side of him to hold her up and studied his face. The girl noticed how stiff it was, but decided his closed eyes were good enough proof of the assumption he was asleep. With gentle and hesitant fingers, Eleven swept his bangs to the side and held her breath as she bent over to plant a fleeting kiss on her brother’s forehead.

“Night, Will,” she mouthed, wanting to say it but not wanting to wake him. Eleven quickly sat back up and made sure she didn’t produce too much noise while rising to her feet. Returning to her bed, she laid the book flat open on its pages by the lamp and crawled under her blanket.

It was a miracle she never heard her friend breathe out with surprise.

It was a miracle she never heard Will’s hand shift to curiously touch his forehead.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this one for a couple of months because I got so unhappy and frustrated with it I resorted to the method of letting it sit for a bit before returning to it.


End file.
